Sunday, April 14, 2024
The Studio, Edinburgh, and touringThe fifth of Rona Munro’s James plays fails to develop an interesting premise about a hidden romance
A dark stage is lapped by flickering candles. Here, f…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:32AMSunday, March 31, 2024
Leeds Playhouse and touringThe company’s trademark fusion of live performance and digital wizardry doesn’t quite hang together in a radical take on Mary Shelley
The structure of Mary She…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42AMSunday, March 24, 2024
Cast, DoncasterElvi Piper’s fine revival of Boff Whalley’s 2014 musical comedy about three sisters on a pit village frontline in 1984 is full of humour, drama and lived experience
Boff W…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:02AMSunday, March 17, 2024
Shakespeare North Playhouse, PrescotHistorical novelist Philippa Gregory has fun reframing the notorious Richard III and the women in his life in her first play
From a hole in the stage, a v…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:06AMSunday, March 10, 2024
Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-AvonSamuel Barnett and Victoria Yeates harmonise as the composer and his ‘assistant’ in a production that sings under the direction of Erica Whyman
Erica Why…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 09:36AMSunday, March 3, 2024
Birmingham RepA university bhangra dance team is torn apart by cultural differences, seamlessly expressed through music and movement, in this zinger of a show
Councillor Liz Clements cried l…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:02AMSunday, February 25, 2024
Royal Exchange, ManchesterInspired by Cornelia Parker famous artwork, and tracking three couples across three decades, Phoebe Eclair-Powell’s play is a clever concept that never catches fi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24AMSunday, February 18, 2024
New Vic, Newcastle-under-LymeA top cast directed by Caroline Wilkes revel in Ron Hutchinson’s laugh-out-loud, if overlong story charting the corporation’s first wireless play
In the earl…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42AMSunday, February 11, 2024
Barn theatre, Cirencester; Watermill theatre, NewburyThe deductive powers of the famous sleuth are put to new uses in these inventive if patchy interpretations, one playful, the other musica…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42AMSunday, February 4, 2024
Playhouse, SheffieldArchers actor Katie Redford captures the ever-shifting mix of love and pain between parent and child in her conversation-starting theatrical soap opera
In a recent interv…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:54AMSunday, January 28, 2024
Royal & Derngate, NorthamptonThe physical comedy ensemble revives the ancient Greek play in an audacious staging with a tragicomic present-day backstory
The keynotes of the time are chao…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:32AMSunday, January 14, 2024
The Mill at Sonning, ReadingThe stage adaptation of the Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra film is brought to life by a full-of-verve cast in Joseph Pitcher’s fine revival
In the g…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:48AMSunday, December 24, 2023
Our roving critic’s highlights include a bravura O’Casey trilogy, a Lionel Bart classic that delivered more, and a perfectly cast portrait of a marriage
Read the Observer critics’ revi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 01:06PMSunday, December 17, 2023
Curve, Leicester; Sherman theatre, CardiffThe action feels distanced in Nikolai Foster’s coolly striking new production of the Lloyd Webber-Rice musical, while turmoil stalks the Darling h…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06AMSunday, December 10, 2023
Leeds Playhouse; Stephen Joseph theatre, Scarborough; Royal Lyceum, EdinburghLionel Bart’s classic musical is all light and shade in James Brining’s in-the-round revival; actors and audi…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:24AMSunday, November 12, 2023
Hull Truck theatre, Hull; and touringThree struggling twentysomethings find solace in dance in the writer-director’s well performed if not quite satisfying new work
I caught the John Godbe…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:42AMSunday, October 29, 2023
Swan, Stratford-upon-AvonGender identity comes to town in writer-co-director Charlie Josephine’s atmospheric but slow-going tale of a disruptive stranger
Last year, in I, Joan, at London�…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:07AMSunday, October 22, 2023
Alphabetti theatre, NewcastleIn Racheal Ofori’s bright new play, Leah St Luce and Jadesola Odunjo delight as wannabe influencers whose friendship is tested by the temptations of fame and f…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:25AMSunday, October 15, 2023
Home, ManchesterThe hit Edinburgh fringe musical about two friends on the trail of a killer has been awkwardly expanded but is still a delight
The storyline of this 2022 musical centr…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:25AMSunday, October 8, 2023
Nottingham PlayhouseThis ‘theatre poem’ by the Australian dramatist Tom Wright lacks drama under Stephen Bailey’s direction
An electric-guitar wielding narrator, dressed in black leath…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:55AMSunday, October 1, 2023
Pitlochry Festival theatreAn impressive ensemble makes the most of Peter Arnott’s new country house play, set during Scotland’s 2014 independence vote
Adaptations of the plays of the pre…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:55AMSunday, September 24, 2023
Theatre by the Lake, KeswickThe audience takes on a supporting role to Andrew Turner’s solo turn in this moving paean to what makes life worth living
This is not a play, but it is playful;…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:25AMSunday, September 17, 2023
His Majesty’s theatre, AberdeenStrong performances are the lifeblood of Morna Pearson’s new adaptation of Bram Stoker’s classic tale for the National Theatre of Scotland and Aberdeen P…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:07AMSunday, July 30, 2023
Town Hall theatre, GalwayO’Casey’s three plays of working-class Dublin life encompass conflict, grief and the human spirit in Garry Hynes’s fine production
A highlight of this year’s…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:07AMSunday, July 16, 2023
Leeds PlayhouseThe songs of the big O are used in crafty ways in David West Read’s moving, celebratory story about getting a band back together
David West Read (writer) and Luke Sheppard (…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:43AMSunday, July 2, 2023
Minerva, ChichesterRakie Ayola excels as Adrienne Kennedy, whose John Lennon play was taken up by Laurence Olivier’s National Theatre while she was sidelined, in this crystal-clear product…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:33AMSunday, June 25, 2023
Octagon theatre, BoltonA group of hastily recruited ‘sisters’ achieve harmony in Alan Plater’s charming play about music and laughter as a relief from war
“It’s a day-in-the-life p…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:43AMSunday, June 11, 2023
Northern Stage, Newcastle; and touringDave Johns, who played Daniel Blake in the Ken Loach film, brings this chilling drama of life on benefits to new audiences
“It is a work of fiction……
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:43AMSunday, June 4, 2023
New Vic theatre, Newcastle-under-LymeConrad Nelson’s fast-flowing production, which races through time and space, exemplifies the ingenuity of regional theatre
In a recent article for the …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 08:36AMSunday, May 28, 2023
Royal Exchange, ManchesterDario Fo and Franca Rama’s bitterly comic 1974 satire is a timely fit for today’s cost of living crisis, here impeded by a cartoonishly bright set
An everyday s…
SOURCE: The Guardian at 07:06AMSunday, May 21, 2023
Old Laundry theatre, Bowness-on WindermereThe playwright’s latest comedy boasts some fine acting, and touches on big themes, but fails to engage emotionally
Alan Ayckbourn is a consummate …
SOURCE: The Guardian at 06:54AM 
